


Prompt #28 - Attune

by Big_Spicy_Garlean_Fucker



Series: FFXIVWrite2019 [9]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Altered Mental States, Drabble, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Human Experimentation, I'm not really sure what to tag this with, Laboratories, Oneshot, Psychological Horror, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 02:55:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20828222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Big_Spicy_Garlean_Fucker/pseuds/Big_Spicy_Garlean_Fucker
Summary: They made him.They fear him.They hurt him, they fix him.He waits.





	Prompt #28 - Attune

**Author's Note:**

> An AU with lab-grown, genetically engineered Resonants being worked on in Garlemald. This is a look into the mind of the Prime, the subject all others' aether signatures are based on. Dude's got it rough.

_It’s cold._

The boy notices little else about the room he’s in, surrounded by stark white walls without so much as a scratch for texture. A lone light beams down at him from above but provides no warmth, no colour, naught. He sits with his eyes closed, all three of them blindfolded, his chin forced down by a series of thin metal rods encircling his skull. They protrude from the back of the chair and hold him in place while the technicians work, tools clicking and scraping the conduits within his neck. He can’t feel a thing of it, of course, but it’s still mightily frigid in here.

_I can’t even shiver._

It would be horribly inconvenient, after all, if the Resonant Prime happened to dislodge a nerve or two that really didn’t need to be dislodged. Especially not while the technicians were working on him! Highly specialized individuals who aren’t easily replaced – he knows them all by the touch of their hands, the common ways in which they move their tools. They never let him feel their aethers.

_I don’t need to._

There’s a soft sizzling noise as a new circuit is soldered into place. He has half a mind to twitch and scare the men behind him, but the paralytic running through his veins will have him corpselike for a day straight. They don’t let him exercise as much anymore. It’s always with the nodes and the pulses and the something-something stimulation. Boring. He’s been good, so very good for them all. Why don’t they let him see the others? It’s been so _long_.

“Hurry up,” he wants to say, but his lips do not move. All he can do is breathe as the machine suctioned to his face commands, and wait for it to be over. The technicians sure do take their sweet time, why, this week he can’t recall a moment of wakefulness when they _weren’t_ sticking things into him! He wonders what the back of his neck must look like, conduits open and blazing bright blue aethers so hot they’d melt cermet were it left untreated. Everything that touches him is aether-resistant, closed off and beyond the realm of his augmented senses. All he has is his hearing to judge what they’re doing to him, that and whatever comes afterwards.

_It hurts._

No it doesn’t, not now, anaesthetised as he is. They’re keeping his mind awake for _something_, he hasn’t slept in seven days, and it’s all beginning to blur together. Falling on his face, a dart in his chest, a razor against his skull. Many, many feelings.

_Why?_

A soft click sounds from behind him, then another. He knows these, the caps being put on his conduits. Then comes the collar, which he dreads. It fastens around his neck and connects _just so_, one of the technicians fixing the many locks in place to keep it from being tampered with. There’s some sort of aetherial input from a device he can’t replicate on his own, and certainly not with the suppressive collar on. One day, they might set him free. They don’t trust him in the slightest – and why should they, when they made him to kill? To warp and maim and destroy? Attuned to the very essence of human fear, he is a loyal, constructed bloodhound to be unleashed upon their innumerable enemies. And the Garlean Empire has a _lot_ of those.

The next time he sees, he’s in a different room. Strapped where he sits, but at least with some stimuli to keep him engaged. Silver-grey walls bolted from floor to ceiling in six-fulm thirds. An aetherproofed environment, then. They’re going to be testing his reading.

A man sits before him, appearing to idly scrawl his observations on a clipboard. The boy knows a measured scratching when he hears it, each letter carefully formed by a practised hand.

_He’s scared._

The man wears a nametag that says _m. Asina _in square print. He can’t be much older than thirty, even if the bags beneath his eyes suggest he hasn’t slept in a century. Asina looks at the subject sitting across from him and smiles.

“Prime.”

The Prime knows how to answer this. He blinks, lower lids squinching up with both recognition and defiance. Predictably, Asina blinks back at him twice. They all do it when caught off guard. What can he even do, bound to his chair? Not once has he tried to attack. He knows better than that. Knows he’ll get his chance, one day.

“How are you feeling?” Asina returns to his clipboard with the standard set of questions printed on it, his own fine writing at the top an almost perfect impression of typed script. The Prime responds with a single word, as he’s been trained.

“Fine.”

Asina writes it down. “Just fine?”

The boy blinks twice, and catches himself doing it a moment later. “Deviation?” Highly uncommon – this one must be new. His brows settle back down upon their ridge, a firm, flat line. Asina does not know him, or the work he’s supposed to be doing. A fool.

“Well, I suppose. A bit vague, don’t you think, _fine_? What sort of data would that be?” Asina’s voice trembles near imperceptibly. “Any pain, worries, woes? Your mental state, perhaps?”

“You are afraid.” says the Prime, scarlet eyes burning bright. “It interferes with your work.”

Asina flinches openly at the sight of that glowing gaze – he _knows_ the boy can’t read him, not with the collar on, but by the Emperor is it frightening. “I… suppose I should write that down, yes…” He scribbles, brows pinching together.

“What are you doing here?”

Asina looks up. They _told_ him not to answer questions, and to ask them himself. But thus engaged, it slips his mind and the Prime’s gaze compels him to speak. “Just doing my job, you know. Testing, all that. I’ve got to make sure you’re doing well, after your enhancements.”

The Prime stares. “I am fine.” Surely this fool will not bite if he baits a question on his enhancements. There’s no way. “What changes have been made that would cause me to be unwell?”

“Oh, plenty of things. Nasty stuff, the Praefectus said. A whole lot of- wait, that’s classified!” Asina puts his clipboard down on his lap, aghast. “How dare you! You’re going to get me fired!”

“Me?” The Prime jerks forth in his chair and the bindings dig into his bare flesh. Asina springs up and takes a step back.

“Oh, I should go, I should go…” The door’s right there, and yet the man refuses to move. Instead, he watches the subject before him lean back in a single, calculated motion, the vein beside his neck pulsing rapidly. “But… I don’t think you’ve ever done this before, have you? Had an actual conversation with someone?” He sets to writing it down, keeping a wide berth around the Prime as he circles, jotting down his observations. Glowing eyes follow him. “My word, this data. It will surely prove enlightening to all the others! You’ve been giving one-word responses all this time, yes? Being vague, unhelpful?”

The Prime narrows his eyes. Asina jots that down too, murmuring something about anger. He should know better than to provoke the mightiest of all Resonants, half his age and thrice as strong, but it seems he hasn’t been working here long enough to know that. He hasn’t been _taught_ the consequences of his folly. The Prime flexes his fingers.

He is attuned to the essence of human fear. And he hungers for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it is intended for the Prime to be my character, Lucius, who I write a lot of Resonant-related things with. I hope you enjoyed it ^^ for more Resonant stuff feel free to comment anything you want to know


End file.
